Political MoJo

The Supreme Court's Thursday ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that upheld a core tenet of the Affordable Care Act is good news for the millions of Americans whose health insurance was on the line. But it's also, in a strange way, good news for a completely different group: the Republican politicians who have all but called for Obamacare to be shot into space on a rocket.

Had the court gone the other way, gutting federal subsidies while leaving the shell of the law on the books, congressional Republicans, as well as GOP governors such as Scott Walker and Chris Christie, would have been put in the uncomfortable position they've managed to avoid since Obamacare was signed into law—having to fix it. The Associated Press outlined Walker's dilemma neatly on Wednesday:

About 183,000 people in Wisconsin purchase their insurance through the exchange and nine out of 10 of them are receiving a federal subsidy, according to an analysis of state data by Wisconsin Children and Families. The average tax credit they receive is $315 a month.

Health care advocates who have been critical of Walker for not taking federal money to pay for expanding Medicaid coverage have also called on the Republican second-term governor to prepare for the subsidies to be taken away.

And many of those Wisconsonites enrolled in the federal exchange are there because Walker put them there. As Bloomberg's Joshua Green noted in a prescient piece in March, Walker booted 83,000 people from the state's Medicaid program and put them on the federal exchange instead. That's not the kind of crisis you want to be dealing with in the middle of a presidential campaign—or ever.

Conservatives would have been thrilled with a ruling in their favor on Thursday. But Roberts' decision spares Walker and his colleagues from what would have come next, and frees them to continue lobbing rhetorical bombs at the law they're now stuck with. As previous generations of Washington Republicans can advise, it's much easier to go to war if you don't need a plan for how to end it.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld federal subsidies in Obamacare in the landmark case of King v. Burwell. In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled against the lawsuit, which would have effectively ended health care coverage for nearly 6 million people in the 34 states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.

SCOTUS holds individuals who get their health insurance through exchange established by federal gov will be eligible for tax subsidies.

While celebrating an event for LGBT Pride Month at the White House on Wednesday, President Obama was interrupted by a woman shouting demands that he end the deportation of LGBT immigrants. Obama was not into it:

"Listen, you're in my house," the president told her, visibly irritated by the disruption. "You're not gonna get a good response from me by interrupting me like this. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. Shame on you. You shouldn't be doing this."

Cheering Obama's response, the crowd was heard booing her calls and attempting to shush her.

"I'm just very disappointed with the way it was handled," Gutiérrez later told the Advocate. "I'm part of the LGBT community, and they didn't back me, instead they were booing, which to me was like a slap in the face to all these people in detention centers."

This is a nice story. Last week, we wrote about the heroic efforts of Charleston's main daily newspaper, the Post and Courier, and their dogged, round-the-clock coverage of the massacre at the Emanuel AME church.

We noted that city newsrooms have been leading breaking coverage during big, national news stories, from Boston to Ferguson, Baltimore to Charleston. In April, the Boston Globe sent lunch to the Baltimore Sun's newsroom. It was their way of paying forward another act of newsroom generosity when in April 2013, the Chicago Tribune bought the Globe pizzas during the bombing coverage. "We can't buy you lost sleep, so at least let us pick up lunch," the Tribune wrote in a letter at the time.

Now, the Baltimore Sun's Executive Editor Trif Alatzas has sent a about a dozen pizzas from D'Allesandro's in Charleston to the Post and Courier newsroom, as a way to pay it forward again:

Westboro Baptist Church, the notorious group of religious extremists that is basically just one family, has said it will attempt to picket the funerals of people killed in the Charleston shootings. In recent tweets, Westboro has suggested the shooting was God's punishment for late pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pickney's having supported Hillary Clinton.

Protesting at funerals is a tactic the group has also tried (unsuccessfully) at burial services following other mass killings, including for victims of the Tucson shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing. But before the Kansas-based hate group can wave its familiar "God Sent the Shooter" signs for the TV cameras, it may have to overcome opposition from the hactivist group Anonymous.

"While it is doubtful these idiots will show up, it is critical that Anonymous have a well-prepared presence on the ground in Charleston," the group said in a press release announcing "Operation Shut Down Westboro Baptist Church." Coordinated by the Anonymous faction Operation Ferguson, which got its start with the Black Lives Matter protests, the effort will reportedly involve surrounding the Westboro protesters and blocking their signs.

Anonymous has periodically targeted Westboro since around 2011, when it hacked the group's website during a televised media interview. The following year, Anonymous helped block Westboro protesters who had shown up at the funeral of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In 2013, Anonymous garnered significant media attention when it "brandjacked" Westboro, creating a fake Facebook site for the group.

So far this week, Operation Ferguson has tweeted out links to personal information of Westboro members. One Anon also posted what could be construed as death threats against members of the church, though he has often drawn rebukes from other members of Anonymous, which tends to disavow violence.

On Tuesday, the Charleston City Council passed a temporary ordinance restricting all protests to at least 300 feet away from funerals.

Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal launched his presidential campaign on Wednesday by releasing a video—a very strange video. In it, he and his wife, Supriya, break the news to their three kids that he'll be spending much of the next six months (at least) in Iowa. What makes it so unusual is that it appears to have been filmed with a camera hidden in a tree. Jindal himself is partially obscured by a large branch. His kids don't sound particularly excited about their father's presidential bid. Maybe they've seen the polls.

Watch:

I had to tell a few people first. But I want you to be next. I’m running for President of the United States of America. Join me: http://www.bobbyjindal.com/announcement/

Update: Sen. Thad Cochran, the state's senior senator, has joined his colleague in appealing to the state legislature to change the Mississippi flag. "it is my personal hope that the state government will consider changing its flag," he said in a statement. The original story is below:

When Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was asked on Sunday about removing the Confederate cross from his state's flag, he demurred. That decision "should be up to the Mississippi legislature and the people of the state," he argued. But 48 hours later, he has changed his mind. On Wednesday, he released a statement calling for the current incarnation of the flag to be "put in the museum" and replaced with something else:

After reflection and prayer, I now believe our state flag should be put in a museum and replaced by one that is more unifying to all Mississippians. As the descendant of several brave Americans who fought for the Confederacy, I have not viewed Mississippi’s current state flag as offensive. However, it is clearer and clearer to me that many of my fellow citizens feel differently and that our state flag increasingly portrays a false impression of our state to others.

In I Corinthians 8, the Apostle Paul said he had no personal objection to eating meat sacrificed to idols. But he went on to say that "if food is a cause of trouble to my brother, or makes my brother offend, I will give up eating meat." The lesson from this passage leads me to conclude that the flag should be removed since it causes offense to so many of my brothers and sisters, creating dissention rather than unity.

This is an issue to be decided by the legislature and other state government officials and not dictated by Washington. If I can be part of a process to achieve consensus within our state, I would welcome the opportunity to participate.

Wicker joins the chancellor of the University of Mississippi, the nephew of former Gov. Haley Barbour, and the state's Republican speaker of the House among other prominent Mississippians who have called for the Confederate symbol to go after the murder of nine African American parishioners at a church last week in Charleston, South Carolina.

On the floor of the South Carolina Senate Tuesday, the son of longtime US Senator and segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond made an impassioned call to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse.

Republican State Sen. Paul Thurmond looked past his own ancestry—and at least two of his colleagues in the Senate who have told the Post and Courier they would vote to keep the flag. He told his colleagues that the "time is right" to remove the symbolic flag from above the statehouse one day after Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham called for its removal. Thurmond eulogized his friend and colleague state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was leading Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Church when he was killed, alongside eight other black churchgoers, in a mass shooting on June 19. Authorities have charged 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

Reflecting on the June 19 shooting, Thurmond said:

I cannot comprehend the hate that was visited upon the Holy City, but I can respond with love and unity and kindness and maybe show others that their motivation for future attacks of hate will not be tolerated, will not result in a race war, will not divide us, but rather will strengthen our resolve to come together as one nation, one state, and one community under God.

Though he said nothing in his speech about his father, who is arguably most famous for his day-long filibuster against civil rights legislation in 1957, the longest in US history, Thurmond discussed his ancestors' place along General Robert E. Lee when the Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox Court House and said he could not fathom how "anyone could fight a civil war based, in part, on the desire to continue the practice of slavery."

Here's an excerpt from his speech:

I think the time is right and the ground is fertile for us to make progress as a state and to come together and remove the Confederate battle flag from prominent statue outside the Statehouse and put it in the museum. It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins and work towards a better future. That future must be built on symbols of peace, love, and unity. That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate, and divisiveness.

I am aware of my heritage. But my appreciation for the things that my forebearers accomplished to make my life better doesn’t mean that I must believe that they always made the right decisions and, for the life of me, I will never understand how anyone could fight a civil war based, in part, on the desire to continue the practice of slavery. Think about it for just a second. Our ancestors were literally fighting to continue to keep human beings as slaves and continue the unimaginable acts that occur when someone is held against their will. I am not proud of this heritage. These practices were inhumane and were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now we have these hate groups and the symbols that they use to remind African Americans that things haven’t changed and that they are still viewed as less than equal human beings. Well, let me tell you: Things have changed. Overwhelmingly, people are not being raised to hate or to believe that they are superior to others based on the color of their skin. My generation was raised to respect all people, of every race, religion, and gender.

I have often wondered what is my purpose here, in the Senate. I’ve asked God to guide me and strengthen me. I have prayed that I will be able to make a difference for this state. I have prayed that I will leave this place better for the future generations. I am proud to take a stand and no longer be silent. I am proud to be on the right side of history regarding the removal of this symbol of racism and bigotry from the statehouse. But let it not satisfy us to stop there. Justice by halves is not justice. We must take down the confederate flag, and we must take it down now. But if we stop there, we have cheated ourselves out of an opportunity to start a different conversation about healing in our state. I am ready. Let us start the conversation.

In the coming days, the Supreme Court will hand down a decision that could weaken the Fair Housing Act's ban on racial discrimination in housing. The timing couldn't be worse: The nation's housing affordability crisis is growing, according to research from the Urban Institute published last week.

Researchers found that in 2013,the last year for which data is available, no county in the US had enough affordable housing for its "extremely low-income" households—those making less than 30 percent of their county's median income. Nationwide, just 28 out of every 100 extremely low-income households had housing considered affordable by government standards, renting at less than 30 percent of their income. The report also found that the affordability gap is widening: Between 2000 and 2013, the number of extremely low-income households seeking to rent increased 38 percent nationwide, from 8.2 million to 11.3 million, while the supply of affordable housing increased only 7 percent, from 3 million to 3.2 million.

Every county in the US had a large gap between the renting needs of its extremely low-income population and available affordable housing. Ben Chartoff/The Urban Institute

The Urban Institute produced a handy interactive showing the affordability gap for low-income renters, county-by-county, using data from the Census and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The report also breaks down some of the key issues contributing to the housing affordability crisis:

Federal housing assistance—in the form of public housing, rent vouchers, and other subsidies—has grown modestly since 2000, but now makes up a far greater share of the affordable housing stock, the Urban Institute found. That's in part due to low vacancies and increasing rents nationwide, which have lifted market-rate units that were once affordable beyond the reach of low-income families. But others have been completely wiped from the market: The report notes that 13 percent of unassisted units with rents at or below $400 in 2001 had been demolished by 2011 and weren't replaced. "Nearly half of the remaining units were built before 1960, putting them at high risk of demolition," the researchers add.

A leaked autopsy report shows that Freddie Gray suffered a fatal "high-energy" blow to the neck, the Baltimore Sun reported late Tuesday.

From the Sun:

The state medical examiner's office concluded that Gray's death could not be ruled an accident, and was instead a homicide, because officers failed to follow safety procedures "through acts of omission."

Though Gray was loaded into the van on his belly, the medical examiner surmised that he may have gotten to his feet and was thrown into the wall during an abrupt change in direction. He was not belted in, but his wrists and ankles were shackled, making him "at risk for an unsupported fall during acceleration or deceleration of the van." The medical examiner compared Gray's injury to those seen in shallow-water diving incidents.

Gray's death in police custody in April sparked protests in Baltimore and throughout the country. Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby decried the leak of the report on Tuesday, saying in a statement, "I strongly condemn anyone with access to trial evidence who has leaked information prior to the resolution of this case." In May, a grand jury indicted the six officers involved in Gray's arrest. Though a sealed court document at one time suggested a prisoner in the van heard Gray "banging against the walls," assistant medical examiner Carol Allan cast doubt on that possibility in the autopsy report, noting that Gray "may have been suffering a seizure at the time," according to the Sun.

After Gray's death, severalformer victims came forward to speak out against "rough rides," a practice in which police allegedly drive erratically with an unrestrained, cuffed prisoner so as to cause injury or pain.